That person would ultimately end up wishing that Google hadn't won the bidding war.

"Google seems more aimed at a moonshot while Amazon is building a ladder to the moon," the person said, frustrated by the idea that if Amazon had acquired the company, the technology would likely already be loose in one of the ecommerce giant's fulfillment centers, instead of plodding along in R&D.

Founded nearly two years ago, Google's robotics division — called "Replicant" internally — originally aimed to "launch a suite of 1.0 products that will be the foundation for future consumer products that interact with the physical world" before 2020.

But now, with Replicant's founder, Andy Rubin, out of the company, sources tell Business Insider that the effort lacks focus.

Although Replicant continues to work on a lot of "incredible" robotics related technology, and is making strides in machine learning and computer vision outside of that division, the source's point is that they believe that the technology would actually be in use had Amazon bought the startup.

"The amazing thing about working at Amazon Robotics is writing code that you can literally see come to life inside an Amazon fulfillment center," one woman says on camera.

"When you hear the term 'advanced robotics' you think of something out of science fiction or the Jetsons — something overly complicated or not actually practical," another man adds. "But here it's actually just the opposite. We're using robotics to solve complicated, real-world challenges with solutions that are incredibly simple and highly functional."

Is making robots that help people get stuff that they buy online as inspiring as working on technology that could potentially interact with normal people on a daily basis?

Maybe not. But one robotics system is actually in the wild now, while the other isn't. And that, in a nutshell, sums up both the pros and cons of Google's gospel of 10x.